Melancholy is nothing new in Japan. It's something that everybody know. It's everywhere: in the paintings, in the performances or in literature. Even the most saddest memes comes from anime. So sadness and melancholy is something inherent in Japan -in IRL and online- and obviously expressed through Internet. I'm not talking about the infamous suicide chats or forums, I'm referring to mental health forums, which are more common. Specially 2chan's board.

These websites are nothing more than forums where girls -the most part of users- explain their dilemmas, ask for advice and share their problems related to juvenile angst: apathy, social pressure, stress, being moody or loneliness. It's not very different than hundreds of forums that you can find online, isn't?. Among these topics we can highlight the criticism of the japanese society, how they are urged to adapt in a way of living where and therefore, hide their inner self, like wearing a invisible mask. This is the birth of mental healther or menhera, the archetypical user with a moody humour thanks to puberty, forced to mask their emotions -as all the japanese, actually- to fit into society.

Due to the existence of this forums, in 2014 menhera-chan was born. Menhera-chan is an artistical manga project by Ezaki Bishuko and its core is a huge critique to shoujo and magical girls; a deconstruction like Puella Magi Madoka Magica did before. The three main characters -Menhera, Subukawu y Yamikawa- hey have to transformate into magical girls by cutting their wirsts in order to save the world. The main character of the series, Menhera-chan, owns a bunny as a pet called Usatan who is known for having an anodyne behaviour: he smokes, says existentialist phrases. Usatan becames even more famous than Menhera-chan and his friends and finally is recognized as official mascot of menhera movement even though it existed a lot of artists who mixed kawaii and grotesque before, like Junko Mizuno.

The counterpant didn't last to show up. Yamikawaii (病かわいい) is the contrary of yumekawa, meaning cute but sick, dark. It's also an umbrella term to design darker fashion with the touch of kawaii like creepy cute (gurokawa), kowa kawaii (spooky kei) or pastel goth. As you can notice, yamikawaii is also a menhera-chan character.

Nevertheless this words became very popular and the discussions started to fill the boards between Orient and Occident fashion lovers, coming menhera to light. The popularity of yamikawa became so strong that it was linked to alternative idol bands -or death pop bands- such as Babymetal or Ladybaby, leading the idol scene into a new direction where more mature and obscure topics were common like suicide, social isolation or bullying. Here you can find some of these bands:

With the menhera trend in our lives and being presented as the new japanese trend with a fashion attached to it, some internet users were triggered. A lot of JSW started to attack the new fashion for glamourizing mental illnesses like depression, for promoting selfharm and for defining teens as unestable, being antifeminist. Their methods included to make pressure at the artist through twitter, among them, Kuaa Oyasmi, designer and postal-girl of menhera movement who is also reported for being suicidal. Later, Kuaa admitted that she has a crisis for this reason.

After this introduction of the menhera history, it's time to describe how it looks. Menhera as a concept is sick but cute and it includes a lot of possibilities which ranges from suicidal magical girl to hentai or gore prints. To make it clear, fymenhera one of the first blogs about this topic in the West, classified the different tendencies of the style.

Shoujo menhera: It's the most close to fairy kei and it would be labeled as yumekawaii...except for the little details. Prints in tshirts with existentialist, depressive or provocative words or sentences are common like mentally sick, isolated or DIE!. These prints are usual in thights too but we can find bandages, cute wounds or sad bunny eyes. Generally plastic accesorizes like injection necklaces, earrings with pill shapes or antigas masks are not rare. It's evident that shoujo menhera comes from mahou kei and nanchate seifuku (modified seifuku for fun).

Ero menhera: The influence comes from babydoll and pastelgoth. Ero menhera includes festish elements like harnesses, condom-patches, and ball gags. The colours are as pastel as shoujo menhera and it could fit into yamikawaii or yumekawaii depending on the outfit. It's also common to see hard yaoi or yuri prints or complements with fake semen.

The main difference between menhera and other yamikawaii fashion like gurokawa or spooky kei is that menhera loses all the fun and eccentric Halloween-esque elements like bats, pumpinks, eyeballs or skulls.

Another difference is that the makeup is actually more natural, using byojaku (red eyebags popularized by cult party kei), mimitambu and ofero which provides a natural blush in ears and face, looking sick or fragile.